Total SEC opponents coming off bye weeks, 2007-2010
Alabama - 17
LSU - 5
Tennessee - 4
Florida - 4
Vanderbilt - 3
Georgia - 3
Auburn - 3
Kentucky - 2
Mississippi State - 1
Mississippi - 1
South Carolina - 0
Arkansas - 0

This means that out of our 32 scheduled SEC games from 2007-2010 (the four most recent years with schedules) Alabama has to face an opponent coming off a bye week over 50% of the time! Meanwhile, no other SEC team has to face more than 5.

If that isn't shocking enough, take a look at this statistic: if bye weeks were truly assigned at random, there would be a less than 1 in 10 sextillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) chance of Alabama facing 17 or more SEC opponents coming off bye weeks (that's calculated by obtaining a z-score and a corresponding p-value, for all you math nerds.) How much is a sextillion? According to wikipedia, there are approximately one sextillion grains of sand on all of the beaches all over the earth combined. That means the odds of this happening to us randomly are about the same as you winning a lottery in which you randomly pick up a grain of sand somewhere in the world and then roll two dice, and to win this lottery you must have picked up the one particular grain of sand that happens to be the first one ever created AND also have rolled precisely an 11 with your dice.

Now, I'm not throwing this out there to claim conspiracy or anything like that, just to point out that there is something going on here that needs to be addressed following this season before any more future SEC schedules are finalized.

Luckily for us this weekend we get to experience the flip side of this issue for once.  Hopefully our extra week of rest and preparation will give us a much needed boost as we attempt to clinch a spot in Atlanta. Roll Tide.